Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

Then they were airborne, projected from one side of the massive Gorge to the other in one long, almost graceful leap from the broken edge of the tunnel to its counterpart on the far side.

Max used all his strength to pull the control yoke back toward his body, shifting it to the left at the last moment as they flew, aiming for the tiny target of the tunnel mouth on the far side. G-forces caused Nastasia’s body to multiply its weight five times more as they flew; she heard Simon grunt as the pressure became literally unbearable.

For one fraction of an instant, in the moment after the MC-7 blew out of the tunnel opening like a projectile, it seemed to fly straight and true. But then, just as suddenly, it started tilting upward, lifting their bodies while the cockpit tried to spin over its own wheel, squealing and groaning in the air as it turned.

A millisecond later, the gigantic wheel smashed into the opposite ice wall, missing the opening by no more than two feet. It dug itself into the ice, disintegrating on impact; the magnetic field blinked out of existence and the cockpit flew free, rocketing through the air in an all-new arc.

They tumbled into the tunnel, clearing the lower lip of the opening by mere inches.

The box-shaped cockpit hit the floor of the tunnel in a shower of sparks and debris. Broken pieces of machinery cart-wheeled all around them as the chamber skidded against the ice floor, screaming down the tunnel for two hundred yards, then three hundred, skirling through the frost and ice until finally, inevitably, it began to slow and finally stop.

The cockpit housing, twisted hopelessly out of shape, came to a halt with one final bone-rattling jolt.

Nastasia was absolutely astonished. They were still alive.

Everything had gone black when the MC-7 hit the wall. Now she could feel the heat of a small laceration high on her forehead; she could hear Max breathing heavily, struggling to move.

“I’m stuck,” he said between clenched teeth. “Help me! We need to get out of this thing!”

“Just give me a minute,” Simon said briefly, sounding as if he was in pain.

Thank god he’s alive, Nastasia thought. In that final tumble across the cockpit, she had lost contact with him. She had no sense of where they were, where the doors were, even which way was up.

“I’m pushing on the passenger door with my feet,” Simon told them. “I think it’s stuck.”

She could locate him now, from the sound of his voice. “Here,” she said. “I’ll help.” She twisted around, felt through the darkness until her legs were lying alongside his and found the crumpled panel of the passenger door with her feet. “Both at once,” she said.

“Do it!” Simon yelled. “One…two…three!”

They kicked at the panel together in one strong blow and the door cracked open, just a bit. But it was enough. A second combined kick, and then a third, and they were able to wriggle out of the wrecked vehicle and roll onto the iced surface of the tunnel.

Simon activated the head and shoulder lamps of his exo-suit as he freed himself. It was all the light they needed.

The heat from Nastasia’s wound started throbbing as she pulled herself to her feet. She could feel herself trembling, and the paltry light of the suits showed her Simon was shaking as well-from the cold and shock in equal measure. A moment later, Max rolled out of the crushed cockpit as well, crawled to his feet and snapped on his emergency light source as well. It cast an eerie shadow over the fragments of broken machinery scattered fifty yards along the ice in both directions.

Nastasia saw something glittering against the ice and realized the heat from the wheel housing had melted the ice below it. There was actual water flowing down here, she realized. But as she watched-in a few seconds-it grew gelid, misty, and started to freeze all over again.

Max tapped at one of his shoulder lamps; it was already starting to flicker. “How much time do we have before the batteries die out on these suits?” he asked Simon.

“Eight hours,” Simon answered, looking at the digital readout on the suit’s forearm.

Nastasia looked at her own watch and thought for a moment. She could not help but wonder if Andrew and the rest of the team had found her satchel and noticed the missing items-or guessed that an identical set of items were still in the Spector.

She knew why she had left it there. She hoped that they would not retrieve it before her mission was complete.

Seven hours and twenty-six minutes, she told herself. That was how much time it would take before the cases she brought would explode, simultaneously, disintegrating the Spector and the renegade camp alike with all its inhabitants.

She forced herself not to give in to her growing empathy for these people. This was why she had been sent here. It had been bestowed upon her to carry out this task, and she would never, could never, question the will of the society that was her life. These were the instructions she had been given, etched for mere moments into that block of ice. She had to do as she was ordered, no matter how much she might wish it to be different.

It was called trimethylzone-18. It was a binary explosive; it came in two parts, one solid and one gaseous. Taken individually, they were inert, benign. But when the gas was mixed with the solid-when it was even exposed to it-the explosion that resulted was incredibly destructive.

The weapon had been developed by Nastasia’s masters to break things. The shockwave it generated actually shattered the fundamental bonds that held solid matter together; the molecules of stone, wood, ice and flesh were blasted to powder in an instant, no piece larger than a grain of sand. Even the compressive sound wave it created could kill a man at more than five hundred yards, and the mass required for the devastating effect was quite literally tiny.

The solid element of trimethylzone-18 was mixed with a bit of pigment and put into two protein powder packs. The gaseous element was compressed in a small canister and disguised as a medication inhaler. Then the tiny battery and timer embedded in the base of the inhaler was all the fuse that Nastasia needed: set the time, touch the base just so, and at the appointed moment a tiny charge from the batter would detonate an equally small bit of gunpowder, no bigger than a fingernail, that would crack the gas canister.

It’d mean death. As simple, as pure, and as final as that: death. All Nastasia had to do was put the inhaler in the nutrition pack, set the timer, and close it. And no one would escape the explosion to come, she knew. Not even Simon.

She had started to care about Simon. After all, she was human; she had come to care deeply for these people. But her cause outweighed her compassion. There was no room for hesitation or regret-not now. Mankind’s fate had been written. This was all she knew: it was better for the planet in the long run, and she would do as she had been told. She had to.

Simon noticed that she was in a daze, suspended in her own space for a few moments. He remained quiet, recovering himself. It was Max who broke the silence.

“Come on Nastasia. We have to keep moving or the heat cells will drain the battery in the suit.”

“Wait, Max,” Simon gestured as he approached her, standing inches away from her face. The light from his suit illuminated Nastasia’s face and made her stark blue eyes stand out like an apparition’s. “Do you need to tell me something?” he asked.

For the first time, Nastasia realized that she might not be able to do this. She had started to care about him too much, but she needed to stop her emotions from getting in the way of her mission.

“No,” she replied stolidly.

Max waited for them impatiently.